Word: probe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
WASHINGTON: Politicians, themselves not the most popular figures in American public life, sometimes have difficulty finding less popular targets suitable for attack. There are drug dealers, Internet porn producers, and recently, the Internal Revenue Service. Now the Senate Finance Committee begins to unveil the findings of a six-month probe, and TIME correspondent Sam Gwynne says the IRS may deserve the public lashing it will receive. The committee will charge that the agency targets lower-and-middle-income people for audits and uses a quota system to rate agents. Some analysts are asking if the service's behavior...
Knight, working as the firm's lobbyist, smoothed the way for the donations, the contracts and an unusual personal visits to the firm's headquarters by Gore himself. The little-known Knight probe, under way for some time, could draw the Vice President deeper into a scandal that has its roots in Bill Clinton's last election but may have its greatest impact on Al Gore's next. In a TIME/CNN poll last week, Gore's approval rate dipped to 51%, the lowest level since March. If the next presidential election were held today, pitting Gore against Texas Governor George...
According to a small but vocal group of antinuclear activists, however, there's much more to worry about than upset feelings. Like all the deep-space probes that have gone before it, Cassini is powered by radioactive isotopes--in this case about 72 lbs. of plutonium 238. If the spacecraft were destroyed, insist these critics, some of the plutonium could be pulverized and wafted away by the wind. Even worse, Cassini is supposed to swing by Earth in 1999 for a gravity assist that would sling it out toward Saturn. If the probe comes too close, it could re-enter...
...slow itself sufficiently to be captured by Mars' gravity, the ship had to pressurize its fuel lines and fire its retrorockets. The last time NASA tried to orbit Mars was in 1993, and that mission ended during pressurization when a fuel line hemorrhaged, sending the billion-dollar Mars Observer probe spinning into the void. Last Tuesday was Surveyor's turn to prime its lines, and despite some well-bitten nails in Mission Control, this time things went perfectly. "To see this event pass successfully is a great relief," said project manager Glenn Cunningham after the pressurization was done. Two days...
Though Attorney General JANET RENO still resists naming an independent counsel in the campaign-finance investigation, sources say she is increasingly dissatisfied with the slow pace of her own task force. Reno and Deputy Attorney General ERIC HOLDER are discussing an internal shake-up in order to accelerate the probe...